


Recovery

by Harukami



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2691047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year into the True Route, Clear comes to see if Mink lived after all.</p>
<p>A stand-alone sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1252828">Mourning</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

Clear has been skulking around for weeks now. 

He'd left too obvious a trail, Mink had chided himself when he first caught news in nearby towns that some strange, white-haired man in a gas mask was asking around after him. There was only one person who fit that description, and Clear certainly had taken it as a challenge when Mink had told him that Clear would never find him. _Don't underestimate me_ , he'd said, as if he's ever had any traits that don't seem practically manufactured to be underestimated.

But he had. He'd underestimated Clear. Scratch he knew wouldn't follow; whether or not they'd cared for him (a ludicrous idea, if also one that had started to make itself apparent by the end), and nobody else was going to hunt him down -- of it they did, they'd have reasons. He hadn't made any effort to disguise his trail. He booked his flight, took it, like a normal person might have, based on the most convenient times.

Even so, it can't have been easy. That was around a year ago now, and even if he'd taken his flights to the nearest big city, he'd rented a bike from there and ridden the rest of the way.

Which is why, in the end, it's taking Clear weeks to actually find him. Clear is searching through town, asking questions. Mink could make it easy for him, he knows. Several of the people he knows in nearby towns have offered to tell him if the Gas Mask shows up, and he could just as easily tell them to direct him to the town he works in, if not his home.

But he doesn't. This has nothing to do with him. Clear got this idea into his own head, and took it as a challenge on his own, and if he wants to come, then let him find him. Mink won't let this disrupt his own daily life.

Even if the only reason, he suspects, that he has a 'daily life' now, is because of how aggressively, relentlessly, Clear reminded him to live. Taking him out to see his Grandfather's grave -- how irresponsible, Mink thinks sometimes. Treating it like some kind of lesson that can be applied. He knows the dead are gone, and the living mourn them.

But he'd come back here to see a view for himself like the one Clear had tried to create for his Grandfather, and, having seen it, it just didn't feel like it was time. He knows what he's doing. Intellectually, he knows. 

He's waiting for significance.

He wants things to have meaning for him. He recognizes that trait in himself but can't defeat it. He was always raised to believe in the significance of life, even if his own life broke those rules. If he had killed Toue himself, he thinks he would have that significance, be able to find peace. If Toue had lived on, but had his power broken, perhaps that would have been enough. If it had nothing to do with Mink at all. Thinking of Toue a broken man with none of his own power-mongering intact; Toue was a dreamer, in his own way, who deserved to have his dreams broken. Thinking of Toue dead instead, but not at Mink's doing, Mink just a supplementary player... He can't find a meaning in that, a resolution.

Mink knows its his own stubbornness.

But he lives on, waiting for the time to feel right, and has started to suspect it won't.

***

A week and a half after he'd had those thoughts, Clear knocks at his cabin's door.

The knock itself is alarming, startling him out of his reverie. People don't wander out this way. It could be someone who got lost in the woods going between towns, but he doesn't believe that for a moment, not with the way Clear has been hunting down information about him, not with the way Mink hasn't taken any steps to prevent it. 

He taps his pipe out in an ashtray, puts it back in his coat with care, and goes to answer the door.

He's met, of course, by that inscrutable gas mask. It's impossible to read Clear's expressions behind that, but in a sense, it doesn't matter. Clear's probably worn that thing all his life, from the way he didn't know his own face. That's why he's got that absurd body language, the exaggerative voice.

"Mink-san!" Clear's hands come up in delighted emoting. "It is you! I have been walking for weeks, did you know?"

"I heard something about that," Mink says. "What do you want?"

"Ehhh?!" And that's an exaggerated sadness. "Is that all you have to say, Mink-san? And we're friends and all!" 

"Are we?" Mink says, but steps back, holds the door open.

Clear enters the cabin with some delight, looking around it with his hands clasped. "This is a lovely home, Mink-san."

"Yes."

"How did you come by it?"

"I made it." He feels almost out of practice at speaking, sighs. "A long time ago."

If anything, Clear is even more delighted by this. "So you built it... with your own hands, that's incredible, Mink-san."

"Do you want some coffee?" He'd just made himself some, and it'd be impolite not to offer.

"Ah, yes, thank you," Clear says, and then hesitates. His hands come to either side of that mask. "May I take this off?"

That's new. Mink finds himself, embarrassingly, a little moved. He's really become softer in the last year, he thinks, but that's no surprise. His hardness was entirely something he'd built up in rage and grief. Both of those feelings have abated into a certain sort of numbness, a tiredness. Of course he'd become softer. "Are you doing that now?"

"Not really," Clear says. "But you have already seen me without it."

"Go ahead."

Clear hesitates even after offering, but seems to gather something in himself, pulls his gas mask off with a sudden jerking motion. His face is the same as it was before -- delicate, beautiful, almost feminine, with a soft mouth and birthmarks by the lower lip, pink eyes, an uncertain, vulnerable expression.

Mink puts a cup of coffee down on the table, and Clear takes it for invitation, sits on the sofa, puts down his gas mask on the table as well.

"I told you I would visit," Clear says. He smiles, a bit awkwardly. "So here I am."

"Here you are," Mink echoes.

"Are you pleased? I told you I could do it."

Letting out a disdainful snort, Mink shrugs one shoulder. "I didn't invite you. You just did that on your own."

"I suppose so," Clear sighs. "Well, I thought you'd be curious about news back home, too, and it was finally an okay time to try to come."

"Good evening, Clear," Huracan says, coming in from the bedroom.

"Ah, Tori-san! Good evening."

"It's Huracan now."

"Ah, Mink-san has named you? How wonderful!"

Mink picks up his own cup of coffee, sits at his desk, and faces him. He allows himself that it's not bad like this. There's plenty of people he wouldn't have wanted to face, but Clear's not one of them. It's not that he'd wanted to, either, and he doesn't know, really, how to face someone in casual conversation any more. But he knows he doesn't have to carry this conversation; Clear's someone who will just take anything and run with it, so whatever. "Why?"

"Excuse me?" 

"Why is it a good time now."

"Ah, Master is improved," Clear says, and clasps his hands around the coffee mug. "It took a long time. Eventually, he was sad, but he kept on going. He seemed somewhat numbed, but he was living on, you understand."

Mink nods. He understands.

"But one day, he went out to the hospital, and then the days after, he kept going, and a few weeks later he brought a young man home," Clear says. "It doesn't make any sense, but I believe this man is Ren-san. Master called him that, and he had the right voice. I don't know how he could do it, move from that Allmate to a human body, but Master found joy again after that. So I stopped sitting on his roof to check on them. They would want some privacy for their joy."

This from the man who wouldn't give him privacy in his grief. Mink sighs. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Life is truly mysterious, Mink-san."

"So since you couldn't stalk your Master, you came to stalk me."

"Yes, just so," Clear agrees. "Scratch is doing well also, I thought you would want to know. They have settled into new distribution of leadership. They speak of you often, however."

Mink snorts again. "They told you this?"

"No, I eavesdropped."

Of course. He's really shameless about it, too. "Huh. Is that all of it?"

"That is all of it..."

Sipping his coffee, Mink says, "Then you came without a lot to do. You can head off again soon."

"May I stay a while?" Clear asks. "It was a long trip and I had wanted to visit, not just bring news."

Well. there is a spare room. He's not using it, and he's not even home often enough for it to be a problem. He doesn't want to share his space, but he has to admit defeat. Clear found him. The least he can do is offer some hospitality.

"Fine," he says.

***

The next few weeks develop into a sort of routine. Mink goes to work as usual; Clear spends that time walking in the woods nearby. He never seems to get tired, at least physically. Mink can tell that Clear has come across the remnants of his village, his graveyard, not because of anything Clear says, but because after some walks he seems sad, pensive. He doesn't say anything to Clear about it, and Clear doesn't bring it up first, so neither of them talk about it.

Clear uses the spare room, but Mink comes to realize that Clear isn't sleeping. He suspected it at first when doing the laundry; the sheets were a little rumpled, as if someone had sat on them, but didn't have the sort of wrinkling or tangling that would come from a person sleeping in them. Even the foot of the bed had the tidy nurse's corners that he'd made the bed into. Eventually, curious, he asks Huracan to keep an eye on Clear at night. Sure enough, he says, Clear doesn't sleep. He sits up and hums to himself mostly, gazing out the window at the woods outside, watching the stars through it.

Between this and Clear's lack of fatigue from the long walks, an idea has occurred to him. It's strange, and uncomfortable, and doesn't make any sort of sense in light of Clear's emotional range, his desire to reach out to others, but it makes perfect sense in how he has apparently registered himself to a Master.

But he doesn't say anything to Clear about it, and Clear doesn't bring it up first.

***

Eventually, he has a day off and caves. Although Clear has been living in his house and, lacking any reason to avoid him, Mink's been making conversation with him and so on, he hasn't reached out to him, either. He has good reason, of course. Reaching out to someone is a form of admission that he wants to remain alive. Life is built on the bonds of person to person, after all.

Still. It's reaching the point of absurdity.

Clear is getting ready for his walk, but stops with one boot on, tilting his head. "Mink-san isn't working today?"

"It's a day off."

"You don't take those often."

"Once in a while," Mink says. "I work with my hands and eyes, so if I overwork them they get tired. So I take a break."

"Ehh, is that so... well, you built this house, so you must be quite the craftsman. Did you make the decorations inside it as well?"

Mink says, "Most of them. The blankets and wall-hangings were made by my mother. I was able to salvage some of them."

Clear grows quiet. "I see..."

Abruptly, Mink gets up, and grabs his coat from the hanger. "I'll walk with you," he says. 

Eyes growing wide, Clear raises his hands as if to protest that Mink doesn't have to -- it's the sort of thing he's inclined to, Mink recalls -- and then doesn't. "I'd like that," he says. He reaches up, takes the gas mask off the hanger by the door as well. He always wears it when going out, though he takes it off when he comes back.

"I'll show you something," Mink says. He waits for Clear to be ready, and they head outside.

It's a strange sensation, walking these paths with someone else crunching the leaves at his side. He's not used to it, used to taking these paths lost completely in his thoughts, not aware of another person moving too. He's comfortable with silence, but the strange sensation grows when Clear, too, is quiet, and he decides to make an effort. To reach out.

"Why do you wear that?"

"Eh?" Clear doesn't play dumb, though perhaps he's tempted to by his brief pause. "My mask?"

"Obviously."

Clear is silent a few moments, then sighs. "My grandfather told me never to take it off."

Mink actually feels a little bad at that, if only a little. Ripping off someone's disguise was one thing, but making them break their word to a dead grandfather was a bit more significant. "Why?"

"I don't know." Clear's voice is a little forlorn. "He said I would be taken away if my face was ever seen, that I would be hated. At the time, I thought it meant I was too hideous to be accepted. That I didn't look human and would never be accepted as human, only as a monster. But I'm wondering, now, if I had misunderstood him."

"You _aren't_ human," Mink points out.

"No, I --" Clear's words don't trail off; they cut off as if sliced with a knife. "You knew, Mink-san?" 

It sounds like he's in pain. Mink struggles inside himself; he's spent so many years ignoring that, but he doesn't have those defenses any more. There's no need to make anyone feel pain, and he wants to take it away. But he also is someone who wants to see things through to the end. And some things have to hurt before they can heal.

"I've come to realize it," Mink says.

"That's right," Clear says. He sticks his hands in his pockets. "I'm an artificial human. My grandfather was a researcher. I was just garbage, but he took me from the trash heap and stole me away so we could become a family."

His voice is lonely, more than anything. Mink can understand.

"So you're a robot."

"I suppose so," Clear agrees. "It's all mechanical."

_It_ , for what, his body? Himself? "You don't seem like it."

"I don't like to think of myself that way," Clear agrees. "I'm a person, Mink-san, but I'm not a person. So what am I?"

Mink says, "You reached out to a grieving man to save his life. I won't say I'm not curious about how real you are, as a person. But that's something called empathy."

"I just didn't want to see you die, Mink-san."

"I wasn't going to do it where anyone could see."

"I didn't mean--"

But he doesn't let Clear finish, doesn't let Clear say _what_ he meant. They're close enough now that he doesn't need to. Trying to think this through is meaningless. It's not really up to people to define what a 'person' is. That's for the Gods to do. Certainly, it introduces some questions. Huracan, for example, is also an artificial intelligence with some emotions. He has never thought of Huracan as a person, though he's beginning to think of him as an individual. Regardless, it doesn't mean they're the same thing. Huracan was made to be a supplement to a person, and Clear is -- what, exactly? 

But it's not something that has to be figured out immediately, either. He can talk more with Huracan, as he can talk more with Clear, if he wants to.

He increases his stride, rounds a corner, and stops. Clear, following him, almost runs into him, and he stops too, gasps. "It's beautiful!"

They've arrived at the cliff on the ridge; below them, the view of the entire area, all the lands they had once had, spreads out beneath them. The sun spreads golden light across it, across them now they were out from the shelter of the woods. It's a warming sensation.

Mink taps Clear's gas mask, but this time, he doesn't take it off for him. "Take this off," he says.

"Why?"

"You need to breathe the air."

'Need' might be a hard word, he thinks. But he brought Clear here deliberately, to deliberately experience this, and the wind is as much an experience as the sight.

Clear hesitates, then takes his mask off. He draws deep breaths, closing his eyes, filling his lungs with air. That's better, Mink thinks, studying those perfect features again. Of course, they're crafted. Now that Mink knows for sure, he can understand the artistry.

He's not sure what he expects from Clear after this, if Clear can even taste the air, can even feel it the way Mink can, can understand its significance despite being divorced from its context. But Clear, after a few breaths, starts to sing.

The words are nonsense, honestly, something about jellyfish dreaming in sea waves, but the song itself is beautiful, calming. Mink is reminded, with a sudden visceral intensity, of his mother singing to his sister after she was born. The songs sounded nothing alike, not in pitch, not in words, not in language. But the emotion behind it was the same; a love, a kindness, a desire to calm and hold and protect.

Mink turns his face away from Clear, breathing in the air and looking out over the land.

After a while, Clear's song trails off, and he lets out a little awkward laugh. "I'm sorry," he says. "I sing... I was made to sing, so I sing. It makes me happy, and Grandfather always told me it made him happy too, so--"

So Clear had wanted to make Mink happy? Mink looks at him, quiet, feeling calmer.

"This is the view," Mink says.

"Excuse me?"

"When you showed me where your Grandfather was buried," Mink says, "you did it with the intention of showing me that even though he had loved that view, he couldn't see it any more. But you wanted to bury him in a place where perhaps his spirit could see it."

"Oh, yes, I. I did, yes."

Mink sighs. "This is the view I wanted to see again before I died," he says. "But once I saw it, I didn't want to stop."

"It's beautiful," Clear says.

How it looks isn't exactly the point. But they only have words, after all. "It is," Mink says.

***

Clear leaves his mask off as they go back to the cabin. Perhaps he understands now that there really is nobody around to see him, or perhaps he just wants to continue to feel the air on his skin, feel the play of warmth and cold as they go between sunlight and shadow under the trees.

When they get back in, he rubs his hands together as if cold. "Shall I make a cup of coffee?" he offers.

"If you wish," Mink says.

Clear does, and Mink, despite having not gone in to work, tinkers a little with one of the bracelets he was having difficulty with. Clear oohs and ahhs over it, and Mink makes it with white bone and polished pink tourmaline, after a few moments thought.

That night, Clear knocks on his door. "May I come in?"

"Sure," Mink says.

He's almost ready for bed, had been praying at his altar from where he's sitting on his bed. Incense is lit, and the air has a sweet scent. Clear breathes it in, smiling. "That's a nice smell."

Mink doesn't explain the significance; there's another time for that, probably. "What is it?" he asks.

Clear's smile fades a little, and he closes the door behind them. "I wanted to thank you for showing me that," he says awkwardly. "The truth is, I came here because I was at a bit of a loss."

"Of course you were," Mink says, not unkindly. "Your grandfather's dead and your master's busy with his own affairs. You probably didn't know what to do with yourself."

"I knew what I _should_ do," Clear says, and sits on the bed next to Mink. "Grandfather told me, when he passed away, that I should go to sleep."

He's got an Allmate; he has some idea what that means. "So suspension?"

"Yes, pretty much," Clear says. "I did, for a long time. Master's voice woke me up. I heard him and I couldn't sleep any more. I just wanted to be at his side."

"So you're sad that you can't be?"

"That's not it," Clear says. "I can be. It's sad that he won't acknowledge himself as my Master, but that's how it is. I recognize him regardless, and that makes me happy too. And I very easily could. He's accepted my friendship, and let me help him ease his suffering, and I'm sure he'd welcome my friendship even more now that he's joyful. It's my will to give him and Ren-san some space while they become reaquainted, not his. But I broke a promise to my Grandfather to be near him, and while I gave them space, what should I do? Try to mend that promise and go back to sleep? What if I didn't wake up again? That's scary."

Perhaps it might be, for someone like Clear, not alive, not dead, just functioning. "So I was a loose end and you came to pursue me."

"Yes," Clear admits. "But I'm happy I did. Getting to see that was wonderful. I felt like I was really alive. And getting to talk with Mink-san like this is wonderful too. When I saw you again, I felt so relieved. I thought, 'oh good! Mink-san is still alive!' and 'Mink-san doesn't look like he's in danger any more'."

Is that really how this guy thinks...? "Haa," Mink says, noncommittal. And then, "What do you want? Out of life."

"I want to be happy," Clear says. "I want to feel human."

It's an impulse. Perhaps a poor one, if he let himself think about it. But he doesn't. He leans over, puts a hand against the back of Clear's head, kisses him. 

For a moment, Clear is still, and Mink wonders if this was a poor choice. His hands aren't entirely clean in this area, and Clear's enough of a sneak that he's sure Clear has some idea of it. But Clear kisses him back a moment later. Clear opens his mouth and lets out a little moan and kisses back, soft lips working against his, tongue sliding against his. He's warm, and soft, and his mouth feels as human as any.

When the kiss breaks, he almost asks if Clear's capable. He doesn't, though. The ability to have sex doesn't define a human, and asking might mislead him, but the ability to express your emotions through your body is that of personhood, if not humanity. He just leans in to kiss him a second time, lets go, decides to see where this leads, if it's possible or if it's not. So long as Clear's willing.

He doesn't let any of the bodily things surprise him. Clear, he does find out, is made for this too, gets hard like a human, has the physical ache to be touched like a human. He prepared himself so thoroughly for whatever-might-be on the bodily side of things, though, that in the end he's surprised by Clear's feelings. By the way Clear hooks legs at his side and whimpers as he pulls him in, arches and moans and cries out and begs for more, wants it, desires everything. The surprise isn't that his body was made to accept another person, that his cheeks can flush with want, that his dick can leak with precome, but that his face shows a desperate need, a want for connection, that his hands roam over Mink like he's feeling out every possible point of connection, that he struggles upward to kiss him over and over as their bodies rock together. When he comes, he locks his arms and legs around Mink and moans and cries out like he's completely lost in passion, and Mink loses it too, stops noticing things, just moves and kisses and touches and lets himself feel another person with him finally, moves with another person, loves another person.

***

The next day, they walk together again -- this time in the evening, when Mink comes home from work. "You're going to go back there someday," Mink says. "To your Master."

"Of course," Clear says easily. "Master's happiness is my happiness, so I'll want to check on him. I'll want to share my happiness with him too, let him know how I am. But I'll come back here again sometime too."

"Will you?" Mink asks.

Clear beams. "Of course! The world is a big place, Mink-san, and I know where to find you now. Why should I stay in one place? I can see Master whenever I want, and see Mink-san wherever I want. So long as you both live, of course," he says, and there's a bit of gravity to that.

"Hm," Mink says, serious in return. There's no way to guarantee life. Even if he's decided to live, accidents happen. Human cruelty happens as well. So he can't make any promises. But... "That sounds like a reasonable way to go about things."

"I'm very reasonable," Clear agrees, then ducks, scoops up an armful of leaves, and tosses them in Mink's face. "Think fast!"

He almost inhales one. They go everywhere, caught in his hair, his ornaments, his jacket. He can taste and smell their moisture, the scent of the gentle decomposition of fallen leaves in his nose.

"Hm," he says again, and then grabs Clear, scoops him up, and tosses him into the deepest collection of leaves he can find, Clear wailing and laughing all the way.


End file.
